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Alistair Ballantine

@alistairballantine

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Staff backend engineer specializing in scalable systems and AI personalization.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek senior backend/platform roles where I can design scalable, reliable systems, mentor engineers, and drive measurable product impact in collaborative, engineering-led organizations.

I am a Staff Backend Engineer with 10+ years designing, building, and scaling high-availability distributed systems for global consumer platforms. I focus on backend architecture, large-scale data pipelines, and AI-driven personalization that support hundreds of millions of users.

At Spotify I led backend architecture for generative playlist expansion and experimentation pipelines, owned batch and streaming pipelines using Kafka, Scio/Spark and GCP, and built infrastructure with Terraform, Kubernetes, and Docker to enable daily zero-downtime deployments. Previously at Amazon and Wayfair I delivered latency-sensitive services, founded a warehouse-fulfillment platform, and improved system reliability and operational metrics through monitoring and automation.

I am a collaborative technical leader and mentor who sets standards for system design, observability, and CI/CD, and who delivers measurable business impact through production-ready, scalable solutions.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Staff Software Engineer

Current

Spotify

Mar 2024 - Present (2 years 3 months)

Led backend architecture for AI-driven personalization, designing Java/Scala microservices and data pipelines that supported 600M MAUs and reduced skip rates by 6.8%. Improved deployment frequency from weekly to daily and cut model iteration time through clearer ML/service boundaries.

Java Scala Kafka GCP Terraform Kubernetes Scio Prometheus ELK

Senior Backend Engineer

Spotify

Apr 2020 - Mar 2024 (3 years 11 months)

Designed and scaled Java/Scala Kafka microservices and Scio/Beam pipelines for real-time personalization, supporting MAU growth from ~300M to ~500M and enabling zero-incident annual Wrapped launches processing petabytes of data.

Java Scala Kafka Scio Beam PostgreSQL Redis Kubernetes CI CD

Software Development Engineer

Amazon

Sep 2017 - Apr 2020 (2 years 7 months)

Engineered scalable Java/Spring Boot backend services for Alexa information experiences supporting 50M+ users, reduced end-to-end latency by 30%, and improved pipeline efficiency and uptime through redesigned event processing and monitoring.

Java Spring Boot AWS Distributed Systems Cloudwatch Kafka Monitoring Incident Response

Senior Software Engineer

Wayfair

Nov 2012 - Sep 2017 (4 years 10 months)

Founded and led development of CastleGate, a 3PL and warehouse-fulfillment platform that enabled 10× logistics expansion and supported 40–50% YoY growth through high-throughput event-driven pipelines and automation.

Event Driven Architecture Java Kafka Scalability Automation MySQL Monitoring Team Leadership

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Cornell University

Master of Professional Studies, Information Science

2011 - 2012

Completed a Master of Professional Studies in Information Science with coursework and projects focused on information systems and data-driven applications.